


Don't look at it like it's forever

by JHSC



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Dogs, F/M, Infertility, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Miscarriage, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, POV Bucky Barnes, Period-typical smoking habits, Relax folks nothing happens to the dog, Sadness, Unplanned Pregnancy, gosh it's a shame Marvel stopped making movies after CATWS, pregnancy loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 17:58:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19469182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC
Summary: "Carter," Bucky says. "Are youknocked up?"





	Don't look at it like it's forever

**Author's Note:**

> Scroll back up and read the first four tags, y'all. This fic is exactly what it says on the tin. If reading this is gonna mess you up -- don't. Self-harm is no fun, go have a cookie and read [Clownfish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14772824/chapters/34165730) instead.

*

The thing is, Bucky wouldn’t have known any of it happened, if it weren’t for that damn dog.

The dog shows up at the SSR camp one day, where they’re dug into the mud bare miles from the front line, planning their assault on Hydra one head at a time. One day it isn’t there, the next day it is, and the whole outfit acts as if a damn miracle had occurred, or that the thing had always been there, always belonged with them.

Bombs falling all the time, shells raining from the sky like deadly hail, craters full of blood and bones surrounding them on all sides – and there they are! A hundred people and more running around like crazy trying to keep their branch running, keep the Howlies hot on the tails of Hydra, and every last one of them winds up losing their damn minds the second a cute canine enters the scene. Fuck stealth, fuck secrecy, fuck the war, fuck the damn angel of death itself – we gotta find the dog something to eat!

Damn ridiculous, is what it is. Bucky wants no part in it.

The dog is small, and brown, and does all of the things dogs typically do, unaware of the ever-present specter of artillery and infantry and fucking science fiction death rays. It whines and begs for food and head scratches and food and water and food and belly rubs and... food. Colonel Phillips, naturally, takes one look at the pitiful little thing and declares the dog a disease vector. And out-and-out nuisance. And, since he already had seven of the latter in the form of the Howlies, he is not interested in taking on an eighth. He forbids anyone from feeding, watering, or coddling the animal.

This, of course, makes the entire camp double their efforts to see the dog fed and fattened up and fawned over. As if it won’t likely step on a landmine tomorrow and get blown to straight to heaven. As if they won’t all be ambushed by the enemy tonight and get blown straight to hell.

Bucky ducks outside the command tent on occasion, taking a break from yelling at Steve with his eyes. He perches on a crate behind the mess tent and lights up a cigarette, one of the cheap ones that Carter hates the smell of, the thick, tar-tasting kind that’ll probably make him die from the inside-out if a Nazi bullet doesn’t get him first.

On occasion, when it’s not otherwise occupied with mooching from the mess or trying to discover new ways to get itself killed inside the camp, the dog joins him on his smoking breaks. Bucky absolutely does not save bread crusts in his pockets for this very reason.

“Hiya, Punk,” he says as the dog trots up to him, tongue lolling out of its mouth in a giant toothy grin, happy to be alive and unconcerned with its possible demise. Bucky fishes out the snack from his pocket and tosses it to Punk, who snaps it out of the air with vigor and swallows it down. It immediately goes back to pawing at his leg for more.

“Feeding the strays, are we?” Carter asks from behind him, voice smooth and tone as matter-of-fact as it always is no matter who she’s talking to, senators or generals or captured officers alike. Steve finds it inspiring, goes weak at the knees for it. Bucky finds it lacerating, like it can strip away his coat and his shirt and his pants and even his skin, leaving him vulnerable to fire and shrapnel and scalpels and groping, roving, digging fingers and he can’t stand more than ten minutes of it before he starts to feel like she’s flaying him alive.

The problem is – and what the voice demonstrates – is that Carter sees through his bullshit, and on the occasion when he’s able to feel fear, to feel anything, that fucking terrifies him.

“Wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last.” He turns at her words, sucking on his cigarette as he does, because the armor he wears may be useless in the face of her attack but hell if he can take it off and not crumble into dust, evaporate in a flash of blue light, explode in a wash of red.

“Well, I’ll hardly be the first to complain,” Carter says. She reaches down to pet Punk, who ducks his head and circles around to sit on the ground at Bucky’s feet. Carter sighs. “I’m not sure that dog enjoys the pleasure of my company.”

“Maybe it just prefers mine,” Bucky says, pulling up both sides of his mouth in a grin that’s been fooling everyone, been fooling even Steve, but won’t fool her for a minute. “Or it knows I’m a single sourpuss and is taking pity on me.”

“Well, I’m glad you have someone,” Carter replies, not sounding at all like she means it. She wrinkles her nose as Bucky blows out a breath of acrid smoke, and takes a seat downwind to light up one of her own fancy menthol cigarettes.

*

_He watches Steve leave, hands tucked deep in his pockets and head hung low, a slight hitch in his step, still, from the bullet wound. Watches him get into a car with his new friend and pull away from the curb, drive down the street, turn left at the light. Watches, a knot tying up his throat and guilt curdling in his stomach – Steve is okay, Steve is fine, Steve is recovering from the bullets and the beating delivered by.... By him._

_He shakes himself free._

_He goes inside._

_He finds her._

_She's... god, she's just as he remembers. She's as old as he is, and unlike him, she looks it. But setting eyes on her gives him that same terrified, known feeling as before, and he clutches at it like a babe with a blanket._

_She opens her eyes. She sees him. She says, "Why, James Buchanan Barnes, as I live and breathe."_

_He takes off his hat. "Hey, Peg."_

*

It's the same scene again a week later: Bucky leaning against his crate sucking on a cigarette like it's the only thing keeping him breathing, like his lungs will give out at the taste of fresh air, like his heart will stop beating and his blood will stop pumping the moment its supply of toxins runs dry. He breathes in the poisonous smoke, he tastes the bitter tar. He is poisonous, he is bitter, he is burning down to ash, he will burn until nothing is left of him but a useless bit of trash discarded on the ground.

Punk comes over again, sits at his feet, and leans against his shins with an affection Bucky can barely feel and certainly doesn’t deserve. Would the dog still sit by him if it knew what he’s done? Would the dog still take food from his hands if it knew how much blood covered them, dripping down to his elbows, falling to the ground in an ever-growing stain? Would it turn away from him, avoid his touch?

Would it turn on him? Would it bite?

He smokes a cigarette, and then another, and pets the dog, and tries to erase the images seared into his memory, the sight of men falling under his sniper fire, blood and life and soul gushing from their bodies.

Eventually, Carter wanders over to his crate for her own smoke break, and that's where the scene changes. Punk greets Carter with unprecedented enthusiasm, completely abandoning Bucky's legs to the cold autumn air in favor of leaping into Carter's lap.

Carter pushes the dog off her uniform skirt and gives it a scratch behind the ears. The dog sits on her feet and leans back against her, not allowing her to move away. Carter sighs, glancing at Bucky and then back down to the dog. "Well. I suppose you've finally seen fit to give me a chance?"

Punk grins, and licks Carter's hand, and wiggles like it’s trying to press even closer to her legs. Bucky’s memory flashes – the neighbor’s little dog, all bark _and_ all bite, flopping into his ma’s lap every other time she stopped by for a visit, wiggling into the scant space left in her lap, the rest taken up by the bulge of her stomach, one or another of Bucky’s sisters slowly growing, expanding into the space, claiming a piece of the world for themselves. That little dog _loved_ Ma, those times.

Carter pulls out her cigarette case and wrinkles her nose the moment it's opened and the scent of high-class tobacco drifts out. She made the same face this morning at her coffee. And last night, at her Reconstituted Meatloaf. She closes the case with a firm snap. "Perhaps I'm not in the mood for these after all."

She glances at Bucky again, then at his lips where his third cigarette is dangling, half-smoked and half-forgotten. "Be a dear and give me a puff of that, would you, Barnes?"

He hands her the cigarette, suspicion blooming in his mind, and watches her take a deep inhale and breathe the smoke out slowly. "You hate Lucky Strikes," he points out.

"Not today, apparently," she says. taking another deep drag before handing the dog-end back to Bucky. "I suppose I just had a craving."

"A craving," he repeats dully. A craving. She just... had a craving. The fancy cigarettes and the coffee and the food all put her off, and the dog won’t stop leaning against her knee, and she had a craving, and Steve has stopped blushing as red as an open wound at the mention of Carter’s name and instead just smiles like he’s got a secret he hasn’t told Bucky yet, and...

"Carter,” he says. “Are you _knocked up?"_

The dog is dislodged from its seat when Carter stands to punch Bucky in the eye.

*

_"You got married?" he asks, looking at the splay of framed photos on the side table. A dark-haired man with an aquiline nose features prominently in many of them, as do a handful of children and teenagers._

_"Yes, I did end up married after all." She smiles, a bit sad this time. "I couldn't afford to wait around for Steve to wake up, you know. I had my own life to live."_

_"He would've married you," he says quietly. "I remember."_

_"I know, darling."_

*

After Carter storms off in an insulted rage, the dog trailing dutifully behind her, Bucky smokes the rest of his cigarettes and wishes to God for some whiskey, some schnapps, some fucking Manischewitz, anything to quiet the screaming sirens echoing between his ears.

 _Knocked up_. Fucksakes, Steve! They're in the middle of a war, on and off the battlefield every week, slipping behind enemy lines and leaving a trail of bodies in their wake as they fight their way back out. Carter's intel is half the reason they ever get out alive, and here Steve is, treating her like some low-class dame. Like someone who won't be devastated when she gets drummed out of the SSR the moment she starts to show. Then what is she gonna do? What are _they_ gonna do?

Fucking idiots. Both of them. Could die any day, and they waste their time _fucking_ like a coupla _morons_.

*

Bucky knows he's right, and that Carter has told Steve what's going on, the morning Steve shows up for breakfast looking like he's been smacked in the face with a mackerel. Put off his breakfast by the starry eyes shining out from beneath the shock, Bucky hightails it out the door of the mess tent.

Steve follows him, of course. Perches himself right up there on the same crate as Bucky lights one up in his usual spot, devoid of any canine attention now that the dog is on self-imposed Carter guard duty.

Before Steve can get a word out, Bucky spits out past his cigarette, "So it's yours, then?"

"Yes, it's– wait, Buck, how did– did Peggy _tell_ you?" _Before me_ , he doesn't say, but the petty jealousy is clear on his big, dumb face.

"Of course she didn't fucking tell me," Bucky snaps back. "I figured it out. It ain't hard."

"Buck. That's not the kind of thing fellas know."

"Steve," Bucky echoes. "How many babies did my ma have?"

Steve frowns. "Five," he says, remembering to count Bucky's younger brother, dead from fever a week out from his birth in 1930.

They didn't sit shiva for him. He wasn't old enough. Bucky's still angry about it.

"Yeah. And how many _pregnancies_ did my ma have?"

Steve looks away, then, because he doesn't know the answer the way Bucky does, wasn't there at the front lines for the sixth and the seventh and the eighth, the blood and the weeping and the days spent in bed. He rolls his lips. "More than five, I'd imagine."

Bucky nods, jaw clenched. "Yeah. More than five. So I know a bun in the oven when I see one, and I _know_ your ma told you how _not_ to make one, so I gotta ask – what the fuck were you _thinking?"_

Steve opens and closes his mouth a couple of times. The wet mackerel look is back on his face. "I didn't, I wasn't–"

"You weren't thinking? Yeah, I figured _that_ part out."

"Buck, come on. I know you think I'm an idiot, but I _did_ think, and I _did_ take precautions," Steve says, leveling Bucky with a disappointed glower of his very own. "We _were_ careful. You know I'd never do anything to risk Peggy like that."

Bucky stares at him, and doesn't deign to legitimize such a piss-poor excuse with the barest response. If they'd been careful, they wouldn't be in this situation: staring down the inevitable loss of their best agent, the guaranteed loss of their captain's focus in the field, and the eventual dissolution of their unit. Steve will get sent back on the USO circuit, Gabe to squander his brain away working KP, Morita to melt with his family in the Oklahoma heat, and Bucky to get blown away on the front lines. Waste and desiccation and death, all because Steve couldn't keep it in his pants.

Steve starts to turn pink, then. He looks away from Bucky and brushes uselessly at his bangs. "I, I used a rubber. Every time. But then, uh–"

He glances over at Bucky. Whatever he sees makes him shove his hands into his pockets and hunch his shoulders. "About two months ago, it broke. We didn't notice until, you know, _after_. Peg said it was okay because it wasn't the right time of the month for her to get pregnant. I guess she was wrong."

"Or that super-serum gave you super-sperm," Bucky says dryly.

"Or that," Steve agrees in the same tone. "Listen, Buck, I was always planning on asking Peg to marry me after the war. This just pushes our timetable up a bit. Everything's going to be fine."

"You have never been fine once in your entire life," Bucky says. "I don't know how you expect to start now."

"I'm sorry. I know I've disappointed you," Steve says, ducking his head down all contrite and shit, the way he used to do with his own ma and Bucky's ma and every teacher they ever had.

Bucky shakes his head and lets out a sigh, trying to let some of his impotent, inconvenient, unreasonable anger out with it. The problem is, if he lets go of his anger, all he'll have left is the fear. And he's not sure he can survive that alone.

"I'm not– I'm not _disappointed_ , I'm not your ma, and I'm not your priest."

" _Definitely_ not my priest," Steve murmurs, and Bucky punches his shoulder. "You do _hit_ like my ma, though."

"Shut the fuck up, Steve," he snaps. "Oy gevalt, your meshuggah is gonna be the death of me."

Steve's head whips around and he stares at him, eyes all wide and blue and blinking. "Buck," he says, voice full of an emotion Bucky doesn't want to examine too closely. Why Steve is getting all worked up from him letting loose in Yiddish for the first time in a while, he'll never understand. Not if he wants to keep his balance.

"This is gonna change things," Bucky explains, cutting him off before they can travel down the rocky road of that particular tangent. "This is war, and you gotta keep your head in the game. That's gonna be a lot harder now that you've got a family to worry about."

"I already worry about my family surviving the war," Steve replies with another significant stare. "But you're right. Things _will_ change. I think if we plan it right, we can get through it without too much disruption. The Howlies aren't going anywhere, Buck, and neither am I."

Of course, Steve saw right through him to his deepest fears. Of course, Steve already has a plan, and a back-up plan, and seventeen contingencies. Of course, things are going to work out for Steve – they always do, in the end.

"Fine," Bucky agrees grudgingly. "I still say it'll all end in tears. But I trust you."

"Thank you," Steve says.

Then Steve smiles, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, like the candles being lit on a Friday night, like a letter from home or a week of leave or a fresh bath, is what that smile is like, and Bucky's not sure he's ever seen one quite like it before. Not there, on Steve's face, shining out, lighting up the world.

"Buck," Steve says, and he's pure joy. "We're gonna have a _baby."_

*

_"Did you..." he trails off, unsure whether or not it's his place to ask. He's trying to learn. He's trying to remember. But he doesn't want to hurt her in the process._

_"Did I what, Bucky?"_

_His lips twitch a bit involuntarily at the name. She'd always only ever called him Barnes. Seventy years it took to get on a first name basis with this dame._

_"Did you end up having more kids?"_

_She looks down at her hands. Then back over to him. "I used to think, oh, someday the pain will stop. I can count on this having an end, an eventual stopping point, after which I’ll be free. But it's been seventy years with no end in sight. I'm beginning to suspect it might be here to say."_

_She's had an orderly bring him a cup of tea. He sets it down. Reaches out to take her hand, feels her squeeze his fingers. "I'm sorry."_

_"Oh, I'm all right," she says lightly. “I’ve had seventy years to get used to it.”_

_"How is it that I know you're lying?" he asks her._

_"Because you aren't an imbecile. Honestly, Bucky, keep up." She squeezes his fingers again until he smiles at her. "I did have more children. Four beautiful children. War orphans, the lot of them. They're all grown up now, of course. But they were lovely."_

_His heart clenches. "I'm glad."_

*

"I hear you've given Steve your blessing," that particular voice says from behind him. He needs to quit smoking – someone always finds him for an awkward conversation when he's got a lit fuse between his teeth.

"Steve does what Steve wants, and there ain't no stopping him," Bucky says to Carter. "Better to bless him than argue with him, as I'm sure you've figured out, letting him under your skirt and all."

"It's almost as if you _want_ me to punch you again," Carter replies without heat, sitting down with her furry shadow beside her. "I don't _let_ Steve do anything. I do what I want."

Bucky doesn't look at her for a moment. He believes her, of course, knows Steve down to his very bones, but... But. He says, quietly, "He's strong."

"He's _Steve_ ," she says, offense creeping into her voice now. "Do you really expect such behavior from him?"

"No one ever expects that kinda behavior from people," Bucky says, shaking his head. "That's how they get you."

He can feel Carter's stare boring into the side of his head, burning his skin down to the bone and reading every thought, every wish, every impulse to cross through his mind like electrons through a filament. He clenches his jaw. Says what he needs to say, now that she's here, and they're alone but for the dog and the crates and the roaches and the blood-stained earth. Says what he needs, because no one else will, no one else _can,_ and God strike him down if he doesn't.

"If he ever bothers you. You let me know. I'll set him straight," Bucky tells her. His body is tense, locked up tighter than the components of his rifle, and more likely to go off unprovoked.

"I appreciate the sentiment, Sergeant Barnes," Carter says after a long moment. She's saying it far too gently. "Thank you."

He nods. "You need anything else?"

"No," she says quietly. "No, I think I have everything I need."

*

Nothing changes, except for the things that change.

Steve and Carter pass each other small, secret smiles across maps of the Western Front. Carter gives up both coffee and cigarettes when she finds that both disagree with her, violently. The dog follows along in her footsteps, and Phillips reacts by pretending he can't see the damn thing at all. If it's not there, he can't object to it.

Bucky wakes in the night, shaking, more often than not. When it happens in their shared tent, Steve reaches across the space between them and, still fully asleep, tucks Bucky under his arm like Bucky's seven-year-old sister does with her teddy bear. When it happens and he's alone, well – well – that's no one's business but his own what he whispers in the dark of night, unknown enemies creeping around outside and untold horrors gestating in the next Hydra base.

Steve's fighting in the field gets more cautious, more defensive, more measured. He wants to survive the war.

Carter's plans in the command tent get more reckless. She wants to end the war.

*

Bucky dreams about his sisters, their curls and their cheek dimples and the clefts in their chins. He dreams about his brother who didn't live. He wakes up wondering if Steve's kid is going to have brown eyes, or blue. Will it be bashful like its father? Will it be poised like its mother?

"You got a name picked out?" Bucky asks idly from his bedroll, three days into a mission.

Steve grins, delighted at the chance to discuss the topic, again, at length. "We thought Sarah for a girl. If it's a boy, though–"

Bucky is instantly suspicious of the twist in Steve's tone, the glint in his eye. "Steven Grant Rogers, don't you dare say if it's a boy you're naming him James."

"What? It has an awful nice ring to it," Steve says. "James Buchanan Rogers. He'll grow up tall and handsome and stubborn as a rat terrier."

"It's bad luck to name a kid after someone who's still alive," Bucky says, appalled. "Good God, Steve, the angel of death is stupid as fuck! It might come for a James and take the wrong one."

"I guess you'll have to pray for a girl, then," Steve says, still glowing with that aura of delight.

"I haven't prayed since 1941," Bucky grumbles. "I ain't starting up again just to deal with your nonsense. First of all, God doesn't have the time. Second of all, you're a punk."

"Jerk," is Steve's response. He's still grinning. Asshole.

*

_"Whatever happened to the dog?" he asks._

_"You'll never believe me," she says, delight glinting in her eyes._

_He finds himself smiling back. "Try me."_

_"Colonel Phillips took it home with him after the war. He named it Sherman. It was their family pet for a good oh, ten years or so."_

_"You're kidding."_

_She laughs. "I told you that you wouldn't believe me."_

*

After two weeks on a mission – sleeping on the ground, eating out of cans, and blowing up Hydra tanks one detonator at a time – the Howlies straggle back into base camp with blisters on their feet and victory on their lips. Carter is there to greet them.

The first thing Bucky notices is that the dog isn't with her.

His heart jerks. What happened to the dog, where is the dog? Was it a sniper? Ordnance? A Nazi knife?

Then the dog comes bowling out of one of the tents – not Carter's – and runs to the Howlies, yipping excitedly.

It doesn't spare Carter a passing glance.

His heart jerks harder. "Oh, _fuck."_

"We'll get you something for your blisters in a minute, Buck," Steve says distractedly.

Bucky grabs him by the arm and squeezes until he has his full attention. " _Steve_. The dog."

He watches Steve look to the dog, then to Carter, then back again. Watches the realization hit, the reality, watches the curtain of grief drop down like a sheet of freezing rain, dousing and drenching and drowning every flickering ember of joy. Watches his steps slow, and then come to a stop in front of Carter, crisp and primped and perfect as always.

 _"Peggy,"_ is all Steve says.

"Captain Rogers," Carter replies. The mask cracks. She swallows thickly. She blinks, tosses her hair and her feelings back with a jerk of her head, and says, "They're waiting in the command tent for your report. You'd best give it to them."

Steve nods. Anyone looking would think that he's all business. Anyone who knows better than to look would see that he's anything _but_. "Sergeant Barnes requires some minor medical intervention. Would you mind delivering him to the medics?"

Carter nods. "Of course. Carry on, then."

Bucky feels ashamed for witnessing the look the two of them share before walking away.

*

"How long?" Bucky asks, once they're out of earshot of the others.

"Ten days," Carter says, shrugging diffidently. "The dog kept me company for most of it. I said I had the flu. It was fine."

Bucky bites his lip. "Carter.. "

"I'm fine now, honestly." She lies so smoothly, this one, walking briskly down the dirt path like it's the sidewalk along Fifth Avenue.

"Peg."

That makes her stop. She doesn't turn. But she stops.

"I'm sorry," he says softly. Gently as he can. He hopes it's enough. "I have no words. There _are_ no words. But I'm sorry."

Her fists clench and release three times, then three more. "Thank you. You're right. There are no words."

"I know you probably don't wanna hear this from some jerk off the street, but my ma, this happened to her." He pauses, then adds, "a few times."

"And she was perfectly fine, I expect?" Carter asks.

He shakes his head, not put off for once by the ice in her tone. It's a sharpness built from fragility – a pane of glass thin enough to slice an artery with the barest pressure, thin enough to shatter at the barest breath of wind. "No. They laid her out flat. Every one of them."

"That is not precisely encouraging to hear." She holds her palm up, cutting him off before he can respond. "I appreciate the intent. I just think for right now, nothing is going to help. So we'd best not talk about it."

"Talk to Steve, at least. Please," he begs, knowing what Carter will say back.

"Oh, he doesn't want to hear about all this," she says, brushing it away with her hand like it's a minimally bothersome fly.

"No," Bucky agrees. "But he might _need_ to."

The hands clench one more time, and relax. "I'll consider it. Shall we continue on?"

*

While Steve is with Carter that night, Bucky stomps out into the woods surrounding base camp, patrolling for scouts and spies and snipers and any suspicious snake in the grass. He makes a circuit at a hundred yards out. Then two hundred. Then three.

He doesn't find anything but dirt and trees and rocks and craters. He thinks about his ma, about his brother, about the others that didn't even make it so far as to get a name and a yahrzeit candle. He thinks about the angel of death, that stupid _fuck_ who can't leave good people their joy, their hopes, their plans, who has to go in and turn it all to ruins, to blood, to viscera.

Fucking hell. Just when he had finally started to come around to the idea, and _this_ happens. He'd thought the prospect of a kid might actually, for once, do what Bucky and Steve's ma and Bucky's ma had all failed at: make Steve be less of a reckless idiot.

Steve never thought that what happened to him mattered to other people – Bucky included, and didn’t _that_ sting – and that belief just got stronger after his ma passed. But for a minute there, just the briefest of moments, he had people who depended on him. For a minute there, he had people worth living for. And he'd started to _try_.

Bucky rounds the camp again and again and again, and doesn't find anything but the sure belief that this war is doing to take them all.

*

_"Are you going to go see him? He does miss you so."_

_"I'm not sure he'd want to see me," he says, thinking of the holes in Steve’s gut and the resignation in his eyes,_

_"My, you are still just as ridiculous as you always were, aren't you?" she laughs. "You thought he hung the moon, and yet you never once saw how important you were to him. You were his family. You kept him in the world. That's not something even I could do."_

_He swallows thickly. "Peg–"_

*

Steve comes back to their tent late, voice gravelly and eyes stained red like blood.

"I know what I'm feeling ain't half what Peg's feeling," Steve says into Bucky's shoulder, fists clenched tight in the back of Bucky's sweater. "I don't wanna take that from her."

"You're allowed to hurt, Steve," Bucky says.

"She's hurting more," Steve argues, breath hot against Bucky’s sweater. "And there's– there's nothing I can _do_."

"I know, pal," Bucky says, rubbing his back gently. "Oh, believe me, I know."

There are no words. There’s nothing he can say to make it better – not for any of them. All he can do is hold on.

*

Steve doesn't cry. But he doesn't let go for a long time.

*

_She sighs, the length of her years weighing heavily on her, suddenly. Suddenly, she is an old woman, wrinkled and long-lived and ailing and full of memory and regret and a thousand-thousand forgotten moments. "Perhaps if we hadn’t had the loss, things would have turned out differently. He might not have lost hope, might have fought harder to survive, in the end, when it mattered."_

_She closes her eyes briefly. "But perhaps not. Nevertheless, we can't change the past. All we can change now is the future. Are you so certain you don't want him in yours?"_

_He stares down into his cup of tea, like it can tell him what to do, what his path is, how he can possibly move forward after everything that's happened. Violence and blood and bone-deep, bracing, chilling, thieving pain._

_And then he looks at Peg, and before his eyes she is young again, eyes glinting in challenge, striding forward with confidence, never looking back. She is a lesson, and a metaphor, and a model of how he can find ways of washing away the blood, cleansing the wound and accepting the scars. Find ways of moving through the grief, stripping and scraping and paring it down into a weight he can bear to carry._

_They have both survived so much. He needs to follow her lead, and thrive._

_"Okay," he says._

_"I will, he says._

_"I'll go," he says._

_*_


End file.
